How to deal with surrounded armies

[ctangus]

The max is 59 experience from bombardment attacks.

Back to the OP's question - when I have troops surrounded out of base I launch continuous deliberate attacks as long as the odds are staying the same or getting better. (If I'm getting 2:1 or better, at least.) If the odds start getting worse I'll rest a day or three to bring my disruption down. Still as was said, it can take a month or more to wipe out a large pocket.

[Yamato hugger]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

General question on Bombardment attacks: I haven't used them much, because they don't seem to kill alot of the enemy, but they do train the other guy's troops. I have certainly seen poor troops become 80 exp ones by just being on the receiving end of bombardments for awhile. Is the Bombardment attack even worth it?

I only use it against troops I know are going to die. If they are troops that are just going to get pushed back, then no, I dont. I depend on air and/or naval assests to bombard those. Wonder where you learned that Q Ball [:D]

[Murphie]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: Taglia

But how? Bombardment Attack and then some Deliberate Attack? Or Shock Attacks? In Chengting I always get 3:1 or more attack odds, for example. I have nearly 5K AV worth, and japanese are on 1 - 1.5K

see above - 1. hit them with aircraft (or ships if on a coast)
2. bomb/bombard them several days in a row
3. deliberate attack
4. IF <enemy not eliminated> THEN go to step 1...

Do you have any HQ units with your attacking force or are your LCUs within range of a Command HQ?

A Corps HQ gives you up to a 10% Assault Bonus. Add a Command HQ within 2X the radius and your attack bonus can increase up to 90% (see section 8.1.1 of the manual).

How's your support for your LCUs? LCUs fight @ full potential when properly supported (see section 8.2 of the manual).

Leadership ratings also effect combat effectivenes (die rolls) - read the post from Joel Billings regarding Impact of Leaders in WiTP.

I like to use my HQs for bonuses, make sure I have leaders in the HQ units that a good leadership rating, and then perform steps 1 and 2 as recommended by rtrapasso but replace step 3 with the shock attack when my troops have decent moral and low fatigue. If your LCUs are running average or higher fatigue or the moral is looking low then use bombardment for a while with artillery units and let your troops defend. This'll let you build up the ratings on your LCUs.

To read up on Shock Attacks see page 151 of the manual.

That's my 2 cents.

[wdolson]

Along with what everyone else said, I notice you said you were playing as Allies. Japanese troops never surrender, they fight to the last man or banzai charge. I've never seen a banzai charge, but many players have.

The game engine is a bit broken when it comes to isolated units that can't retreat. They get very tough to kill. I have noticed that isolated units tend to fare well when they have an assault value, even if = 1. As soon as the AV drops to 0, they drop like flies.

It can take a while to wear down a large unit. I had some massive battles in China and it sometimes took weeks of constant pressure before the isolated units began to evaporate. The first to go are low AV units.

This behavior of isloated units is one of the most irritating quirks of the game along with the ships that take 99% Sys damage and linger for days, even when attacked again and again. Even if it wasn't going to sink on its own, it would be scuttled if that badly damaged.

Bill

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

Along with what everyone else said, I notice you said you were playing as Allies. Japanese troops never surrender, they fight to the last man or banzai charge. I've never seen a banzai charge, but many players have.

The game engine is a bit broken when it comes to isolated units that can't retreat. They get very tough to kill. I have noticed that isolated units tend to fare well when they have an assault value, even if = 1. As soon as the AV drops to 0, they drop like flies.

It can take a while to wear down a large unit. I had some massive battles in China and it sometimes took weeks of constant pressure before the isolated units began to evaporate. The first to go are low AV units.

This behavior of isloated units is one of the most irritating quirks of the game along with the ships that take 99% Sys damage and linger for days, even when attacked again and again. Even if it wasn't going to sink on its own, it would be scuttled if that badly damaged.

Bill

It sort of depends on how one looks at it... Japanese held out for years after the war...

i look at the failure to Allied eliminate troops in the boondocks as "guerilla" forces which are otherwise not very well modelled in the game... even the few Dutch held out for something like a year in the DEI (despite no outside support and hostile locals). US/PI forces actually grew from almost nothing on Mindanao to something like 30000 troops with minimal outside support.

So when it takes you a couple of months to wipe out some defeated forces, keep this in mind: the game is actually being nicer to you than reality would be.

[afspret]

I use a daily combo of aerial and arty bombardment and every once&nbsp;in a while hit them with ground attacks using all available infantry & armored units.&nbsp; Even so, in some instances it does take&nbsp;a while to&nbsp;eliminate surrounded or cut off units.&nbsp; In one instance it took almost&nbsp;two months for my combined force of Oz & Dutch units to wipeout two cut off Jap units that landed&nbsp;at Koepang, Timor.&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet in another instance the Jap units trying to take Wake were wiped out&nbsp;after only 3 days by the islands USMC Def Force (maybe because the Lex showed up and drove off the IJN TF before they could finish unloading).&nbsp;Anyway, like alot of situations in the game,&nbsp;its likely up to the role of the dice think to decide an outcome.

[marky]

[;)]




Oorah

[Japanese_Spirit]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

Along with what everyone else said, I notice you said you were playing as Allies. Japanese troops never surrender, they fight to the last man or banzai charge. I've never seen a banzai charge, but many players have.

The game engine is a bit broken when it comes to isolated units that can't retreat. They get very tough to kill. I have noticed that isolated units tend to fare well when they have an assault value, even if = 1. As soon as the AV drops to 0, they drop like flies.

It can take a while to wear down a large unit. I had some massive battles in China and it sometimes took weeks of constant pressure before the isolated units began to evaporate. The first to go are low AV units.

This behavior of isloated units is one of the most irritating quirks of the game along with the ships that take 99% Sys damage and linger for days, even when attacked again and again. Even if it wasn't going to sink on its own, it would be scuttled if that badly damaged.

Bill

Considering alot of other war games out there, WitP is going to be the most bugless and realistic game you are going to get. Out of everything that is released thus far, only WitP still continues to hold onto any realistic value.

In regards to the Japanese fighting engine, from what I have read, few Japanese soldiers actually "surrendered", the majority did fight on. If losing, they would commit suicide, even along with civillians, in caves or anywhere to prevent surrendering. I read one tale when a Japanese officer gave a village several grenades with orders to "commit suicide".

So, I think in regards, the engine is realistic enough on the Japanese front. They fight to the last. And, I do like how even if a base falls, the player can still say fight on an island until either surrender or "To the Death!".

China is pretty realistic, too. Sure, they have alot of troops and it may take a while to flush them out but considering Chinese tactics at the time, it is going to take longer in China for victory realistically.

Rtrapasso is correct, the game is alot more kinder than real life.

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso
It sort of depends on how one looks at it... Japanese held out for years after the war...

It is true that a few die hards held out for years. I believe the last one surrendered in Guam in 1972. There were some Americans who survived on their own too. One on Guam, another gunner from a Helldiver that went down over Japan lived off the land until caught and turned over to the US occupation in 1946. A few scattered Americans lived in the jungles in the Philippines too.

A few of these were groups who were organized into guerilla troops, but most were isolated soldiers who just wanted to survive.

When my father was on Guam, some Japanese came down from the hills and raided the kitchen one night. They didn't want to fight, they just wanted food. My father did take to sleeping with his .45 under his pillow though.

i look at the failure to Allied eliminate troops in the boondocks as "guerilla" forces which are otherwise not very well modelled in the game... even the few Dutch held out for something like a year in the DEI (despite no outside support and hostile locals). US/PI forces actually grew from almost nothing on Mindanao to something like 30000 troops with minimal outside support.

So when it takes you a couple of months to wipe out some defeated forces, keep this in mind: the game is actually being nicer to you than reality would be.

The few places where guerillas did organize were generally places where the occupying army did not stick around to finish the job of mopping up. Most of the US garrison on Mindanao had the opportunity to dissapear into the hills because they took Davao and left the rest of the island in Allied hands for quite a while, concentrating their forces at Bataan.

If I remember correctly, I dimly recall reading about this a while back, these bands of otherwise lost soldiers on Mindanao were organized into a guerilla force by special agents sent in to raise a guerilla army.

Mindanao was also a very good place to do it. It's been the site of low scale conflict for 500 years. When the Spanish arrived and colonized the Philippines, they found the natives in the north to be open to converting to Catholocism. On Mindanao, Islam had already reached there and the Muslims fought the Spanish instead of converting. Muslim bands of rebels still live in the hills on Mindanao. In the 1940s, this existing army was turned against the Japanese, who the Muslims there considered more evil than the Christians. At least the US had promised to give the Philippines their freedom in 1945 before the war started.

In every case during the war, on all fronts, it was very rare for any organized force to stand up to a strong attacking force for very long after being surrounded. The only cases where the surrounded force did survive more than a few days was when they were also in posession of a fortified base or city with supplies. The 101st's stand at Bastone only lasted because they held the city. If the Germans had been able to drive them from the city, they division would have folded fairly quickly.

McArthur's stand at Corrigedor is another case of a surrounded and battered army holding out in a pre-prepared fortress. His army would never have lasted if he didn't hold what is a base in game terms.

If you push a sizable force out into the countryside without a source of supply, they will cease to have any fighting cohesion after a day or two. In the game, I've seen stacks of 20 divisions hold out for weeks after being pushed out of a base. In one instance, I surrounded a large Japanese force on a non-road, non-city hex just southeast of Rangoon. The force consisted of most of Japan's armor as well as a couple of infantry divisions and some independent brigades. I had snuck a force in behind them to cut off their supply before moving most of my forces in Burma and a good part of the Indian army in to attack them (this was against the AI, so I wasn't worried about being out flanked).

Because of the time it took to move my large force off road to attack them, the Japanese force was out of supply for a couple of weeks before my army got into the same hex. Planting 100,000 troops in the middle of nowhere, then having their supply cut off, they will go through their food fairly quickly. Then a large enemy force assaults them, they will burn through their ammo in fairly short order. Especially after the first week of heavy combat.

Their situation would be far more dire than the British at Arnhem or the Germans at Stalingrad. At Arnhem, the British only had one division, and they were getting some supply from the air. They still didn't last very long. The German sixth army lasted longer, but Germany was putting up the largest airlift of supplies in history to tha tpoint. Every plane that could transport supplies was flying in and out of Stalingrad. The Germans also controlled most of the city for most of the battle.

Any non-Japanese army in the situation of the force near Rangoon would have surrendered. A Japanese army would have died gloriously in banzai charges until they were down to some scattered few who would move into the jungle and cease to be a threat.

I've never seen a banzai charge, but I have heard stories of others who have. I don't know how they are triggered, but the routine that determines when a situation is hopeless does not work very well. Forces and ships will both survive long after the situation would be deemed hopeless in the real world.

I still agree with Japanese_Spirit's feelings about the game overall. Despite the bugs and odd behavior, it is an excellent game with great playability. I expect that I will be playing it, or tinkering with it for a long time.

Bill

[rtrapasso]

Any non-Japanese army in the situation of the force near Rangoon would have surrendered. A Japanese army would have died gloriously in banzai charges until they were down to some scattered few who would move into the jungle and cease to be a threat.

you are ignoring the example of the Dutch that i mentioned - they held out for months and months just on Sumatra (or was it Java?) despite lack of support, bases, or supplies. The IJA finally did eliminate them, but it was not easy or fast.

If I remember correctly, I dimly recall reading about this a while back, these bands of otherwise lost soldiers on Mindanao were organized into a guerilla force by special agents sent in to raise a guerilla army.

Guerilla forces in PI were originally organized by USA (US Army) officers - they received very little support from the USA as it was felt "there could not possibly be organized resistance in the PI" and so were apparently ignored, despite them having contact by radio, etc.

Eventually, the OSS, USA and USN did give them limited support. The guerilla army supposedly tied down around 250,000 IJA troops. Try dealing with a situation like that in the game...

Because of the time it took to move my large force off road to attack them, the Japanese force was out of supply for a couple of weeks before my army got into the same hex. Planting 100,000 troops in the middle of nowhere, then having their supply cut off, they will go through their food fairly quickly. Then a large enemy force assaults them, they will burn through their ammo in fairly short order. Especially after the first week of heavy combat.

Their situation would be far more dire than the British at Arnhem or the Germans at Stalingrad.

In WITP, we are generally not talking about urban warfare a la Arnhem, Stalingrad, but forces out in the boonies - with hills and jungles.

IIRC - the Japanese forces on Luzon were cut-off from any bases or source of resupply, yet continued to hold out for months.

As for the IJA soldier never surrendering: that was true during the early part of the war, but as the war progressed, it became less and less true. IIRC, the US Army was shocked when they started getting surrenders during the Saipan campaign (although the majority of the IJA wouldn't surrender, more and more started to realize it was a lost cause and threw in the towel.) i am not saying it was a majority of the troops, but for the first time the US had to deal with significant numbers of Japanese prisoners.

EDIT: My point is the game does NOT deal with this sort of thing at all. Dealing with the cut-off but dealing with minor pockets like these gives a sort-of one off approach to dealing with guerillas: it was time consuming and difficult, and it did happen.